Orange Sierra Leone, the mobile market leader with 51% market share and 3.04 million subscribers, has significantly scaled its network infrastructure by inaugurating a new backup datacenter in the southern city of Bo. This strategic investment of €23 million ($26.7 million) creates an identical replica of its main datacenter in Freetown, designed to function as a crucial disaster-recovery hub.
Enhancing Network Resilience and Availability
The primary purpose of the new facility, inaugurated on November 29, is to prevent emergencies, outages, or natural disasters—such as the landslides and recurrent flooding that often affect Freetown—from disrupting digital services across the country.
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Strategic Location: The location in Bo, far from the capital, ensures service continuity if Freetown’s main center is compromised. The company noted that the center also contributes to extending digital infrastructure to underserved regional communities, particularly those in the southern and eastern corridors toward Makeni, Kono, and Kenema.
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Wider Investments: This datacenter launch aligns with a broader $50 million investment Orange Sierra Leone made to fully modernize its entire nationwide telecom network, which now supports full 4G and 5G capability.
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Scale and Sustainability: The operator now runs 616 telecom sites across the country, with 70% of those sites powered by green-energy sources, emphasizing its commitment to sustainable infrastructure development.
Communications Minister Salima Bah stressed the critical importance of uninterrupted service, asserting that robust investments by both the government and operators are essential as the internet has become an “indispensable tool” for daily activities across businesses, households, and public administration. The GSMA argues that such service quality upgrades are vital to strengthening Orange Sierra Leone’s competitive position and improving the digital experience for the broader community.
